Sikes: Great Texas Birding Classic is much more than a bird count competition

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Part of the Port Aransas Spoonbills birding team that placed first in the Big Sit! competition in the Great Texas Birding Classic. From left is Nick Lorette, Bobby Sherwood, Glen Martin, Joan Holt, Scott Holt and Mikael Berhens. They spotted 107 bird species within 24 hours.

Copyright 2014 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Imagine a group of 10 folks restricted to a 17-foot circle for 24 hours recording every bird species they spot.

It’s called The Big Sit. And it’s part of the Great Texas Birding Classic, which has been documenting rare and common bird species for the past 18 years.

The annual competition, which actually is many competitions running almost simultaneously for a month, just ended. It ran from April 15 through May 15 throughout the state. The competition used to be limited to the Texas coast, but expanded last year to include the entire state. As many of you would imagine, the Coastal Bend was well represented.

One of our most celebrated repeat champions is a team sponsored by the Port Aransas & Mustang Island Chamber of Commerce. The Port Aransas Spoonbills, lead by veteran birders Joan and Scott Holt, spent a chilly 24 hours perched atop the Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center Observation Tower on May 3.

And during that time, they recorded 107 species. The next nearest total was 94 spotted by another local team, the Hazel Bazemore Sitting Hawks, sponsored by Swarovski Optik, followed by the Tule Geese, also local, which spotted 92 species.

In the State Park Tournament, which restricts observers to a particular state park of their choice, Goose Island State Park did well. First place went to the Gawking Geese team with 107 bird species spotted during 24 hours. The team was made up of two TPW employees, Kendal Keyes and Ben Horstmann, along with Larry and Judy Geiger, a couple from Wyoming who volunteer as park hosts at the park’s campgrounds.

The winner of this year’s Statewide Weeklong Tournament is the Swarovski Optik Highway Hawks. These dedicated marathon birders spotted a record 356 species, which garnered $10,000 toward a conservation project of their choice thanks to a donation from Swarovski. The previous record was 340 species.

The grand total for species spotted during the competition was an impressive 425, another record, according to Cliff Shackelford, TPW’s nongame ornithologist.

“I think it’s noteworthy that 400-plus species were found across the state within a month’s time,” Shackelford said. “In some states in the U.S., finding 400 species could take years.”

Coincidentally, around the time of the competition, the American Birding Association scheduled its annual conference at the Omni Corpus Christi Hotel on the Bayfront. Several members of the association were treated to a rare gift that the convention and visitors bureau could not have planned.

They sighted not one, but two brown boobies , a large, web-footed seabird rarely seen in this area. This caused quite a stir among birders, who knew this pair of immature boobies should have been far away. And five teams competing in this year’s birding classic listed the booby. That’s a first.

Birding Classic organizers encourage participants to log their finds onto eBird , a real time, online checklist hosted by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society. This contributes to a national database that helps track bird abundance and distribution.

In 2012, citizen scientists in North America reported 3.1 million bird observations to eBird. These sightings are combined with the observations of an international network of birders to provide a global picture.

As impressive as this may seem, the scientific value of Great Texas Birding Classic is limited, according to Keith Arnold with the Texas Bird Records Committee. Arnold said the scientific value mainly revolves around documenting the presence or absence of a particular species, which can help us understand the expansion or contraction of a species’ range in Texas.

The real value of the Texas event is its fundraising potential and its use as a model for other states to follow, according to Shelly Plante, Texas Parks & Wildlife’s Nature Tourism Manager. So far, 40 other states have followed Texas by started similar competitions.

What began as a modest event on the Texas coast has grown to 81 birding teams statewide in this year’s event, involving more than 400 of the state’s most astute observers of all ages. To date, funds from entry fees and sponsorships have totaled $824,500, Plante said. About $18,000 of that came from this year’s competition.

Over the years, the event has generated $137,000 for the Packery Channel Sanctuary on Padre Island, $25,000 for Paradise Pond Sanctuary on Mustang Island and $33,000 for invasive plant removal and control in Port Aransas and on the Welder Wildlife Foundation refuge near Sinton, among other worthwhile projects.

David Sikes’ Outdoors column appear Thursday and Sunday. Contact David at 361-886-3616 or david.sikes@caller.com. Twitter: @DavidOutdoors.

Copyright 2014 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Want to participate in the conversation? Log in or become a subscriber today. Subscribers can read and comment on any story, anytime. Non-subscribers will only be able to view comments on select stories.